The Forge Reference Project

Topic: [KPFS] Wow.
Started by: athornton
Started on: 4/17/2007
Board: lumpley games

My gaming group is much more narrative-oriented than I ever believed possible.

They are also much sicker bastards than I knew. And yes, this is the gaming group that on our first or second session--we were playing D&D 3.0--went through Thieves in the Forest backwards, met the wererat before acquiring the silver weapon, and one of them replied, "You said there was a chest of silver pieces here, right? OK. I grab a handful of silver pieces, and I FIST the wererat." And then rolled a natural 20.

But, damn. Even after five years of that I was not prepared for the depravity that Kill Puppies For Satan unleashed.

I mean, seriously. The lapsed Catholics in my group have some serious issues to work out. The lapsed Baptists do too.

But, on the other hand, once I stop twitching and vomiting, I'm so proud of them, because on their own they got to the following brief scene:

STEVE (played by Jason): OK, so, do I have some rope in my trunk?

The GM (that's ME) STARES at STEVE.

STEVE PAUSES.

STEVE: I have some rope in my trunk, and I use it to tie Reverend Haggard to the bumper.

That was actually an amazing moment, when Jason realized that, yes, I really did mean it, they were in control of the story, and I was just along for the ride and to provide occasional adjudication. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with where that ride took me, but, hey. One of my players is adamant that he does not like storytelling games; yet he was as into it--and making up stuff without asking me if he was allowed do it--as anyone else by the end of the (mercifully short) game. That sick bastard.

See, typically, we play D&D, and it's typically not much role-playing at all. It's very tactical and problem-solving oriented: figure out what the bad guys are, where they're standing, what their special powers are, and then whomp the crap out of them. This is not necessarily what I'd choose (I have a whole narrative arc that's basically explicitly equates corporate capitalism with Lawful Evil, which everyone has totally ignored in order to beat up monsters, not that I'm bitter), but it's what my group likes to do. So this was one hell of a narratological departure for them, and it went (in some senses) far more successfully than I would ever have predicted.

(Pretty much my entire setup was, "You guys are at a bar. Tell me why you're all there and why you're sitting together. OK. Your (pointing at Amy) cellphone rings. It's Satan," and telling them about the two big Easter services the next day that it would be good for them to disrupt, one Catholic and with the mayor, and one fundamentalist Protestant and with the governor.)

Also, I am astonished at the prescience of the rulebook text. None of my players have read the rulebook, of course. (I think most of them probably can read, but they choose not to.) But on their own, they blended kittens--rather than drinking the kitten juice, they fed it to the cats they had not yet tortured to death. Two of them independently worked out that they'd met by trolling each other as underage girls on The Internets. My wife elected to play a syphilitic all-purpose molester, and, without having read any of the scenarios, named him "Gerald." I don't think she even knows any Geralds. I guess it's just a good creepy name. And, you know, although I expected them to do a good job desecrating churches...putting Viagra into the priest's wine and roofies into the congregation's was just exceptional.

I learned a lot about my players this past session. Mostly I learned that if I ever sleep in a room with any of them, it will be with one eye open, and on my back. Given that I'm married to one of them, this could be a problem.

Adam